Open Access

Carsten Hartmann

• or stable linear input-output systems, the method of balanced truncation (B.C.~Moore, {\em IEEE Trans. Auto. Contr.} {\bf AC-26}, 17--32, 1981) consists in finding a coordinate transformation such that modes which are least sensitive to the external input (controllability) also give the least output (observability) and therefore can be neglected. A drawback is that projecting the original equations of motion onto the subspace of interest typically fails to preserve the problem's physical structure, e.g., if the original equations are of second-order form or Hamiltonian. For Hamiltonian systems, a natural way of restricting a system to a subspace is by means of constraints, and we show, employing singular perturbation arguments, that balanced truncation can be done in a structure-preserving fashion. The thus obtained reduced Hamiltonian system preserves stability and passivity and satisfies the usual balanced truncation error bound.